Is Facebook Ruining Our Lives?

What started out as a plain old directory for Harvard undergrads and alumni from Mark Zuckerberg and the gang suddenly exploded into a social media network used by almost anyone with access to the internet. Be in front of a computer at work or at home, or even when people are outside and on the go, there’s no denying that a large majority of the online population makes use of the leading social network out there.

Facebook Causes Relationship Issues

Recent studies have shown that Facebook may not be as fun as we think. For starters, it’s been shown that Facebook causes relationship issues not only between “friends”, but among romantic partners as well. As socially positive as the site sets itself to be, these studies only go to show that the social axe can swing both ways as well.

On a more personal note, Facebook has also been seen to cause internal anxieties particularly among young adults, where studies have shown that those who were more active on the popular social network were more likely to develop a susceptibility to depression. Add to this the obvious distraction from schoolwork that Facebook causes and we can see how Facebook can actually also be a tool that could cause problems to the average young adult.

Facebook Ruining Our Lives -Infographic

This infographic from Who Is Hosting This sheds a little more light on the subject to further detail how exactly the leading online pastime can be causing more problems than we’d like to think.

After seeing what the infographic had to say, perhaps you yourself would want to rethink the amount of time you spend online to keep updated on your friends and tend to virtual crops and so on..

Why don’t you head on out and reach out to your friends in person?

Is Facebook Ruining Your Life?

Have you noticed if Facebook, or any other social network, has had a negative impact on your life lately? How many hours a day do you actually spend on social networks?

Source: Social Media Lover

Facebook’s new policy changes allow it to read your face, use it for ads

Facebook’s proposed changes to its Data Use and Privacy policies give the platform more control and knowledge of a user’s image and likeness.

Facebook is making big changes to the language in its Data Use and Privacy Policy that will allow the company to use information already on the platform in new ways that might frustrate some users. While some of the changes may raise some red flags for those concerned about giving up even more private data, at least the company is telling us ahead of time.

The list of proposed changes are available via the Facebook Site Governance page for review, although the exact language is obscured from users. The most important changes have to do with how Facebook can recognize and manage a user’s image to create a better experience on the platform and create Sponsored Stories without legal reproach.

The changes come at the order of a judge, now Facebook has finally ended the class-action lawsuit against its use of user information for ads and sponsored stories with a$20 million settlement. The lawsuit put Facebook in the hot seat for using the images and content of users for ad content without consent or compensation — even, at times, featuring users who were under 18.  The company is trying to ensure that it won’t surprise users again, and is using plenty of plain language to protect itself.

“We rewrote the entire advertising section to better explain what we thought was important for people to know about how we use the information we receive to provide relevant ads to people on and off Facebook,” Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote to users.

That new advertising section essentially covers the thorny issues in Facebook’s recent lawsuit. When the changes go into effect after a week-long comment period, simply using Facebook will allow the company to use the name, likeness and language of a user for ads or “Sponsored Stories” without any compensation. That issue now extends to minors, which was the biggest sticking point of the class-action law suit, as users under 18 consent to testify that an adult has given permission for this to happen.

The second is a tiny, easily-overlooked change in the way that Facebook manages facial recognition for photo tags. With the new updates, Facebook could match faces in friends’ photos by reading and analyzing features in a user’s profile photo. Egan told All Things that this feature is directed to encourage tagging more photos and prevent “unsavory” photos from reaching the public forum.

However, if the idea that Facebook knows your face is unsettling, the feature can be disabled via the platform’s labyrinthian Privacy Settings dashboard.

Facebook will pay $15 per user after judge approves final $20M ad settlement

Did you reply to that class action notice from Facebook? If so, you get $15 as a result of a “sponsored stories” lawsuit that shone light on the way lawyers and activists represent privacy concerns.

Facebook will pay out $9 million to approximately 614,000 users as part of a $20 million legal settlement that is intended to compensate users for the social network’s decision to display their pictures in “sponsored stories” ads without permission.

In an order filed Monday in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg gave the final thumbs up to a revised deal that will raise individual payouts to $15 each — a total that is higher than the $10 maximum proposed under an earlier version of the settlement. The payouts will only go to those who responded to a notice earlier this year (it’s too late for everyone else).

The payouts increased after fewer people than anticipated responded to the class action notices sent out by Facebook. Under the final deal, the $11 million left over after the $15 subscriber payouts will go to lawyers, fees and a dozen non-profit groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Monday’s decision is the final step in a long-running court case that not only shone light on Facebook’s advertising practices, but also raised a debate over the role of lawyers and activists groups in addressing alleged privacy violations by companies like Google, Apple and Facebook. On previous occasions, courts approved multimillion dollar settlements in which all of the money went to lawyers and consumers groups; this time, Judge Seeborg rejected the first version of the settlement, saying the proposed payments — and the lawyer awards — were “plucked out of thin air.”

Approximately 7,000 Facebook users opted out of the settlement altogether, meaning they are free to bring lawsuits of their own against the social network. Their chance of cashing in would appear low, however, as Judge Seeborg repeatedly questioned whether Facebook users had suffered a real loss, noting it is “far from clear that they could ever have shown they were actually harmed in any meaningful way.”

Here’s today’s order (related court documents describe the lawyers fees and the number of claims) :

theQ, a social network focused connected camera

From the land of Abba and Spotify comes theQ, a lifetyle product startup that has come out with theQ Camera, which is dead simple to use, has built in 3G connectivity and allows you to post directly to your social networks.

Today theQ, a Stockholm, Sweden based lifestyle products company is releasing the TheQ camera, a 5-megapixel camera (available in nine colors for $199) with a 24mm wide-angle lens and a f/2.4 aperture that has 2 GB of integrated storage and 3G connectivity – just add a SIM card — and allows you to take and publish photos directly to your social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Google+, Flickr, email and Tumblr (but no Instagram.) That’s one of the reasons they call it the first Social Camera.

TheQ camera has a 2.7-inch display and is waterproof up to 3 feet. The camera has a manual focus lens and three pre-set capture modes for automatic camera control. The diminutive device comes with unlimited online storage space courtesy of theQ and has something called theQ light, a low-level ring flash built into the camera design that enables users to take beautiful photos at night. It also comes with nine software filters.

Photos are social

“With over 500 million photos uploaded and shared daily, more than double the amount from two years ago, the market is ripening for socially connected devices,” theQ CEO Steven Christensen said in a press release. While I agree with his thesis, that the market is ready for connected devices, I wonder if theQ camera is a little underpowered for today’s market (though I like their premise of shoot-and-share.)

The modern smartphone cameras have become amazingly good  and are getting better. Most importantly they are the camera which are always in our pocket and as a result the photos taken by my iPhone, and occasionally by a Samsung Galaxy S4, have a sense of immediacy which is not there on other non-connected cameras. Smartphones are a good way to snap and load photos to social networks — there photos need not be perfect but need immediacy.

Now compare this with more traditional non-connected cameras. A Sony RX-1, a Sony RX-100 and an old Lumix — and I lament the lack of connectivity in those cameras. 

Where there is a camera, there needs to be connectivity

And that is why connectivity on cameras ranks pretty high in my books. The big brands are waking up to the influence of social networks and connectedness and some have added Wi-Fi to their cameras but it still is early days. 

So, from that standpoint, theQ camera team has an opportunity to make a dent in the low-end of camera market. While $199 is a low enough price, they are competing with smartphone as a camera. So as a company they need to take a good look at their roadmap and then at the roadmap of mobile phone makers and figure how best they can get ahead or on par with the handset cameras. And at the sometime they need to embrace the wider web — from storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Weibo or whatever —  and use the device software as a strategic weapon. They need to add Wi-Fi sharing and Bluetooth 4.0 LE to allow me to use the phone as connected device option as well.

That said and despite the shortcoming I am buying the Berry Fields model – it does sound tasty and looks quite cool. And connected and I am a sucker for startups building consumer hardware — we need to take a chance on these guys or live in a world of slow moving dinosaurs.

15 Facebook Tips and Tricks

If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..

In this post we share with you some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends. Without further ado, here’s 15 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know. If you have interesting tips/tricks related to Facebook, please feel free to share in the comment box below.

1. How To Download Facebook Photo Albums

   FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, with the click of a button.
   

2. How To Share Flickr Photos To Facebook

   Flickr2Facebook is an unofficial Flickr to Facebook uploader(bookmarklet) which allows you upload photos to Facebook from Flickr.
   

3. How To Update Facebook Without Using Facebook

   hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.
   

4. How To Schedule Facebook Messages

   Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.
   

5. How To "Friend" Someone On Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

   A short tutorial on Makeuseof to guide you how to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to your closer friends.
   

6. How To Create A Photo Collage Using Pictures Of Your Facebook Friends

   Click on Friends tab. Proceed to More tab. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—" . Your Facebook friends collage is right on your computer screen.
   

7. How To Know When Facebook Friends Secretly Delete Or Block You

   This service has been discontinued. X-Friends is a unique tool for tracking friends that disappear from Facebook.
   

8. How To Display Selected Pictures Only On Your Facebook Profile Page

   A little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. Click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends"
   

9. How To Remove Facebook Advertisements

   This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.
   

10. How To Access Facebook Chat On Desktop

    Gabtastik and digsby let you keep Facebook chat sessions open on your Windows desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.
    

11. How To Create Quiz On Facebook Easily

    LOLapps provides quiz creator that can be employed to conjure up these popular personality quizzes that are so widespread in Facebook.
    

12. How To Get Facebook Updates On Email

    NutshellMail consolidates your Facebook accounts through the inbox you use the most.
    

13. How To Update Facebook Status From Firefox

    FireStatus is a status update utility for multiple social networks, including FaceBook.
    

14. How To Get Facebook On Your Desktop

    Seesmic Desktop, Facebooker, Xobni, Facebook Sidebar Gadget, Scrapboy and Facebook AIR application are desktop applications that allows you interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser.
    

15. How To Delete, Cancel And Terminate Facebook Account And Profile

    A simple guide to terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile easily.
    
    
    

Inside Facebook: A Short Story

It was announced 2 years ago that 500 million users have joined Facebook .Not Bad for a website that not even exist until  8 years ago .This story which is a creation by Mark Zukerberg has almost become mythological ,As the owner says ”You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies”

So,Who is Mark Zukerberg? 500 million users ! that’s a ming boggling number of users joined Facebook.To give you an idea of just how many people who is,it’s the population of the United States, Japan and Germany combined.Hard to believe that the very young Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg founded Facebook only 8 years ago.

It is in DNA now in the american culture.Facebook is a private company and earns al lot.But,Mark Zukerberg Don’t tells the real income.You know What ? After the creation of Facebook Mark ZukerBerg was offered 1 billion Dollars.The idea of Facebook was just to connect Students with their friends of the college.

Insights

Playing games is the best thing that people do when they find some perfect time to it. With over 1.5 thousand lakh images submitted everyday, one of Facebook’s most well-known functions has been the capability to upload pics. Users can upload as many images as they want.

There are more than 200 million user that use Facebook on their Mobiles.It is came to know that more people use Facebook from their Mobiles other than their Computer.And Facebook is used by many mobile operator companies to promote their business.

Facebook offer more than 70 languages.just because 70% users are not from united states.Facebook is great source for the entrepreneurs to promote their business worldwide.more than 250 million people goes to external site from Facebook.

Since April 2011,Facebook has also added a new function know as Voice calling,yeah you can video call too.And Facebook users have the ability to make voice or video call with their friends.Few years back,Facebook also introduced a function for adding usernames to their profiles.

After all Facebook is really helping everyone in their jobs(means everything they do).It is predicted that Facebook will also introduce an ad network like Adsense but it can’t be the next Google.